The present invention relates to a medicine supply apparatus which supplies medicine contained in a tablet case to a container (phial, bag), and the like by the quantity designated by a prescription in a hospital, and the like.
In hospitals or pharmacies, for example, as described in Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 5282/1982 (B65B1/30), a medicine supply apparatus (referred to as a tablet packing machine in the publication) has been heretofore used to dispense the medicine prescribed by a doctor to a patient. In such system the quantity described in the prescription of the medicines (tablets, capsules, and the like) is discharged from a discharge drum (referred to as an alignment board in the above-described publication) in the tablet case one by one, subsequently collected by a hopper and packed.
Moreover, in recent years, there has been a demand for enhancement of space efficiency even in hospitals or pharmacies, and it is urgently necessary to enlarge the capacity without enlarging the installation space of the medicine supply apparatus. On the other hand, the above-described publication is designed so that a supplementary stand can additionally be installed.
However, since the increase of storage amount is limited even in such constitution, it has been demanded to efficiently store tablet cases in a case storage part for storing the tablet cases.
Moreover, in order to increase the number of stored tablet cases, a plurality of case storage parts for storing the tablet cases are vertically extended, and constituted back and forth. In this case, the front side case storage part is set to be movable so that the tablet case can be stored/delivered into/from the inner side case storage part, but the front side case storage part has to be moved every time the tablet case of the inner side case storage part is refilled with the medicine. Therefore, in a situation in which the inner side case storage part is frequently refilled with the medicine, there is a problem that the operation remarkably becomes intricate.
The present invention has been developed to solve such conventional technical problem, and provides a medicine supply apparatus which improves the storage efficiency of tablet cases to a case storage part and further improves the refilling operation property of the tablet case with the medicine.
The medicine supply apparatus of the present invention comprises a plurality of types of tablet cases different in medicine containing capacity and a plurality of types of tablet case storage parts, a plurality of tablet cases of any one type out of the plurality of types of tablet cases can be stored in the tablet case storage part, the plurality of types of tablet case storage parts substantially have the same size, and at least two or more of the plurality of types of tablet case storage parts are combined and formed.
Moreover, the medicine supply apparatus of the present invention comprises at least two types of large-capacity and small-capacity tablet cases for containing medicine, an inner side case storage part for storing a plurality of tablet cases, and a front side case storage part, movably disposed on the front side of the inner side case storage part, for containing the plurality of tablet cases, and the front side case storage part stores a plurality of only the large-capacity tablet cases.
Furthermore, in the above-described medicine supply apparatus of the present invention, the inner side case storage part contains a plurality of tablet cases of only one type out of small-capacity tablet case and large-capacity tablet case.